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 year on the outbreak of the Crimean war, witnessed the battle of the Alma from the maintop of H.M.S. Agamemnon. On his return to England he gave evidence before the committee of inquiry with regard to the condition of the British army at Sebastopol. After losing his seat for Aylesbury at the general election in March 1857, he made a tour in India during the latter part of that year and 1858, in order to study the causes and effects of the Indian mutiny. In April 1859 he unsuccessfully contested York, but in December 1860 was returned as one of the members for Southwark. In July 1861 he again became under-secretary for foreign affairs in Lord Palmerston's administration, in which Lord John (first earl) Russell was foreign secretary. On Palmerston's death in October 1865, Layard continued to hold the same office in Lord Russell's administration, in which Lord Clarendon was foreign secretary, and he resigned with the ministry in July next year. In December 1868, when Gladstone had become prime minister for the first time, Layard was appointed to the post of chief commissioner of works, and was admitted to the privy council. In November of the following year he resigned that office, and his career as a politician was brought to an end by his acceptance of the post of British minister at Madrid.

Layard was in agreement with Lord Beaconsfield's political opinions in regard to Eastern Europe. On 31 March 1877 he was accordingly transferred by Lord Beaconsfield from Madrid to Constantinople, in succession to Sir Henry George Elliot. Within a month of his arrival the Russo-Turkish war broke out, and his action soon became the theme of excited controversy among politicians at home. His sympathies were undoubtedly with Turkey, but in a despatch to the foreign minister, Lord Derby, of February 1878, he solemnly denied reports that he had encouraged Turkey to commence or continue the war, or had led her to believe that England would give her material support. He declared he had always 'striven for peace,' and for 'the cause of religious and political liberty.' In June 1878 he negotiated the Anglo-Turkish convention for the British occupation of Cyprus. In June 1878 he received the order of the grand cross of the Bath as a mark of recognition of his advocacy of Lord Beaconsfield's imperial views. In April 1880 a general election took place in England, and it resulted in the resignation of Lord Beaconsfield and his ministry, and in the formation of Gladstone's second administration. Thereupon Layard received leave of absence from his post at Constantinople, and his official career came to an end. In May Mr. G. J. (now Viscount) Goschen was sent to Constantinople in his place as special ambassador and minister-plenipotentiary of Great Britain. In his later years Layard lived much in Italy, chiefly at Venice, where he was well known as a social figure and an authority on art, which had always been a subject of his close study. His interest in Italian art was very deep. In February 1866 he was appointed a trustee of the National Gallery, and he became honorary foreign secretary of the Royal Academy of Arts. He died in London on 5 July 1894. His remains were cremated and buried at Woking on 9 July. In 1869 he married Mary Evelyn, daughter of Sir John Guest ; she survived him.

Two portraits of Layard in crayon were made by Mr. G. F. Watts, R.A., the one for Mr. John Murray in 1848, the other a few years later for Layard's own collection of pictures; the former portrait is reproduced in 'Early Adventures' ( 2nd edit.) A coloured picture of Layard, taken in 1843, forms the frontispiece to 'Early Adventures' (1st edit.)

Layard made a greater reputation as an excavator than as a politician or a diplomatist, but he was without the true archaeologist's feeling — a fact which is sufficiently proved by 'his presenting to his friends neatly cut tablets containing fragments of cuneiform inscriptions, which, of course, left serious lacunæ in priceless historical documents' (Athenæum, 14 July 1894). His best-known works are those that deal with his excavations. The excavations at Nimrûd were described in 'Nineveh and its Remains' (1849, 2 vols.) ; and 'Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon' (1853) recounts his second series of excavations ; these were his principal works. Drawings of the excavated bas-reliefs were published in two series of plates entitled 'The Monuments of Nineveh' (1849) and 'A Second Series of Monuments of Nineveh' (1853). In 'Inscriptions in the Cuneiform Character from Assyrian Monuments' (1851) he printed, with Sir H. C. Rawlinson's assistance, copies of a few of the monumental texts from his diggings, but he took no part in the decipherment of the inscriptions — a work which was carried out by Rawlinson, Dr. Hinckes, M. Jules Oppert, and others. In 1851 an abridgment of 'Nineveh and its Remains' was published for the railway bookstalls, under the title 'A Popular Account of Discoveries at Nineveh,' a second edition of which was produced in 1867 under the old title, 'Nineveh and its Remains,' together